Finding no one appeared, he made a mental note that he had been tricked, but deemed it best to postpone his revenge. "I don't think I ever saw two people so wholly devoted to each other as Mr. and Mrs. Drelincourt are," he presently remarked. "They are more like--well--like lovers than----" "Than two people who have been long enough married to have a daughter who will be eighteen on the second of next month. But they are always the same. They seem to live only for each other." "And for their daughter." "Oh, I am quite a secondary person, I assure you, especially with papa. Do you know, Wally, I believe he is sometimes actually jealous of me when he thinks I am paying mamma too many attentions. It almost seems as if he grudged me more than a tiny corner of her heart." "That seems rather a strange feeling for a father to entertain." "Somehow, papa seems different from other people. I can't explain how or in what way, only I feel that there is a difference." "There's a magnetism about Mr. Drelincourt which seems to draw people to him whether they wish it or no. Me he attracts more than any man I ever met." "You are not the only one by many who has experienced the same peculiar attraction. Can you wonder at mamma and I loving him so dearly?" Before there was time to say more the portière was drawn aside, and the second Mrs. Drelincourt advanced slowly into the room. Although she had left her fortieth birthday behind her, she was still a very beautiful woman, with a freshness and purity of complexion almost rivaling that of her daughter. Strangers seeing them together found it hard to realize that she was Marian's mother. "Mamma," exclaimed Marian, "I have here the very first Gloire de Dijon which has come into bloom. I've been watching it for days on purpose that you might have it. I've not forgotten that it's your favorite flower." "You are always thinking of me." "As if it were possible to think of you and love you half as much as you deserve!" said Marian, as she proceeded to fix the flower in her mother's dress. "That would indeed be an impossibility." Everybody started and turned their eyes in one direction. The speaker was Mr. Drelincourt. He was standing in the archway, holding the portière aside with one hand. "Have you not another rose for me, _petite?_" he asked, as he came forward: "It is the only one which is yet open, papa; but there will be a lot more in a day or two." "By which time they will have become common. _N'importe_. I must try to find existence endurable without one." Then, turning to his wife: "The postman has just brought me a letter which must have been delayed in transit, since it was evidently intended to reach me yesterday. It is dated from Paris a couple of days ago, and is written by my old friend, Colonel Winslow. In it he says that we may expect him at Fairlawn on Thursday--that's today--in time for dinner. He may arrive at any moment."